At Home: A Short History of Private Life

This morning I woke up at 8 a.m. and immediately unlocked my Kindle to begin reading the book I just started last night. When I got restless just laying in my bed as the sun got brighter and began shining through the window that sits right above my pillow.

My mattress in the floor. My nightstand is the cubic foot of floor space next to my bed. I have a problem with seeking permanence in the places I live because I have moved around so much ever since I turned 18. So I have no furniture in my apartment except a sofa and a desk in the living room. I unplug the fan and salt lamp Madelyn gave me for my 20th birthday. Both sit on the opposite side of my room from my bed, on the floor of course.

It’s almost 60 degrees in my apartment so I layer up with sweatpants and sweatshirts I keep at the foot of my bed for instances just like this. As soon as the calendar turned from September to October, the temperature drastically dropped. It seems as though the weather has been unceremoniously cold for October. The local weathermen keep saying we’re going to have a horrible winter. I don’t like changing my thermostat from cool to heat until at least November. Not for any particular reason, possibly just delusionally holding onto the idea of hot weather for as long as I can. I’m the only one who lives here, so I make the rules.

I open all the blinds in my living room. I have a lot of them. A whole wall of my apartment is filled with windows. I like to keep the blinds open at all hours of the day, even when it gets dark and people walking in the parking lot can easily see in. I live on the third floor and there are no apartments directly across from me, so who’s going to be able to see in anyways?

After opening the blinds I went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and washed my face with the bathroom door open. Because I could. 

During the week I eat avocado toast for breakfast, every day. I’ve always had a lot of trouble eating breakfast on weekday mornings because I find myself unexplainably anxious about the day ahead. Especially this semester, as my days seem to be filled either denser than they have been in the past. But today is Saturday, and the only strict plan I have for the day is to attend the Eras Movie at a drive-in with my friends. So I eat yogurt and granola with peanut butter, sitting with my back against the armrest and stretching my legs out straight, taking up the rest of the couch all by myself.

I don’t have a television, but in the space on the wall that is reserved for a television, I hung up a bunch of my photographs on 13x19-inch paper. I liked it a lot when I first did it in January, so I printed out more. Now, almost every bit of wall space in my living room is covered in my photographs. I told Blakely that I am pondering having a gallery opening in December, right before I graduate. I already have all the photographs hung up on my walls, all I need is to make invitations, send them out to my friends, serve wine, and let people walk around my apartment in elegant attire admiring my life’s work.

It would be good for me to invite people into my space because that means it would have to be presentable to the masses, not just me. Sometimes I fear that I don’t consider myself human to the same degree that I consider others human. I keep my apartment messy. Some areas house good mess, some house bad. Last week was midterms and for some reason, I found myself physically unable to clean out the bowls I was eating yogurt out of. By the time Saturday came around, I didn’t have any bowls left in the cupboard and the dirty ones had all grown mold. That’s the benefit of living with roommates, I will treat them better than I treat myself. Not once in my time living with roommates did I ever leave them the gift of a moldy yogurt bowl. No matter how tired or stressed I was, the bowl was in the dishwasher. Lately, I’ve been trying to think of myself as my own roommate. Like there are two of me. Blakely supports this thinking, she says that she’s been telling me for years that I have multiple personalities.

Speaking of Blakely, I got to see her for the first time in a long time last night, which is where this realization of being too lenient with myself came from. We have both been working a lot of jobs this semester and she has a dog this semester that she must take care of, so we haven’t been able to see as much of each other as last year. So I told her I was buying us dinner and we were going to hang out in my apartment– attendance mandatory. When I home for the day at 4 p.m. I looked around my apartment and came to the conclusion that it was not in an acceptable state for Blakely. I spent two hours cleaning.

It was not disgustingly dirty if that’s what you’re thinking. But it looked exactly what you would imagine a 21-year-old girl’s apartment who lives alone and rarely has guests over. My everyday makeup items were thrown across the bathroom counter along with every single hair product I use. The trash can was overflowing to the point where I started throwing makeup wipes onto the floor next to the trashcan instead of walking it to the kitchen. Imagine if Blakely had walked in and seen this! There were two dirty cookie sheets sitting on the stove with remnants of breaded chicken breasts that I had cooked a full week ago. It was an atrocity and I could not ask Blakely to come over, eat dinner, and hang out with me in this condition. But if this space needs to be cleaner for Blakely, doesn’t it need to be cleaner for me too?

Halfway through cleaning, I started to fear my apartment smelt of avocados and the rotisserie chicken I had just cut, so I opened all the windows and balcony door to rid the place of the alleged smell. It was a windy day outside so I kept hearing the rustling leaves on the tree near my balcony and felt the breeze even though I was in my closet, hanging up clothes that had been lying on my floor. I had forgotten how good it felt to have the windows open. The apartment that generally felt claustrophobic and secluded from the rest of the world now had its arms wide open to the outside world. Like I had pressed a remote and the garage door opened and I was no longer working and living in a garage. It makes the apartment a bit colder, but it makes my collegiate apartment feel more like a home. Especially when I clean all the dirty dishes in the sink and put away the jackets that collect on the back of my couch. 

I left the blinds and the windows open the rest of the night, despite Blakely expressing how exposed she felt. Occasionally she’ll call me when she’s walking home from work late at night and yell, “Close your blinds!” into the phone because she can see me cooking in my kitchen. I told her I like to be a spectacle.

We DoorDashed burgers and sat on the floor eating them because I don’t have a table. To be a good host, I offered Blakley the laptop bed table that I keep next to my couch for when I want a more fine-dining experience. She declined, then promptly took a bite out of her guacamole burger and dropped a pickle on my carpet.

After eating, we became obnoxiously loud. I have a deep seeded fear that my next door and downstairs neighbors both hate me. If they don’t already, they might now. We were drawing mustaches on our faces with eyeliners, recording dancing TikTok’s as if we were going to get more than 3,000 views, and Blakely had me doing my high-pitched scream laughing that happens when I really get going. 

Despite it being nighttime by then and the windows were still wide open, we got hot. We were doing rigorous work, here! I drank from my water bottle, and Blakley went into the kitchen looking for cups. I have none. I have absolutely no cups! I am the only one who lives in this apartment, and I only drink water out of my water bottle, the only other liquid I digest is Naked Green Machine, which I drink straight out of the 64oz bottle. Bottoms up! I shuffled around in my kitchen until I found a plastic red cup that said “Go vote!” on it that I had taken, illicitly, from a Student Government event from last year.

Eventually Blakely had to leave to take out her dog, whom I have a little beef with. As soon as she left the apartment, I closed up the windows and the blinds and the place felt incredibly quiet again. Like I needed to put on background music to fill the ringing in my ears, but also was tired and didn’t want the stimulation.

So I took a shower, went to bed, and woke up in the morning to a clean apartment. Walking into the kitchen to get my yogurt this morning, I realized it was the first time I had felt calm upon walking into the kitchen instead of the dishes in the sink creating another line on my to-do list.

This morning while I sat stretched out across the entire couch, watching a show out loud on my computer that I had seen four times before, I got an email telling me I had been given credentials to photograph a Golden State Warriors basketball game in early November. Obviously ecstatic news. Without having to worry about how I might look to onlookers, as there were none, I stood up on the couch, bouncing around in celebration while listening to Megan The Stallion. I am aware there are a handful of people who I could call and tell the news to and those people would be very happy and celebrate with me and bounce around to Megan The Stallion in their own respective cities. But I woke up this morning alone, I brushed my teeth alone, I ate breakfast alone, and the thought didn’t even enter my mind to celebrate with anyone but myself. Sometimes I ask Blakely, my certified psychiatrist as a third-year psychology student, if she would diagnose me as a narcissist. She tells me to shut up. I tell her she better not talk to her other clients like that.

After sending my newest story off to my editor, I decided to head downtown. Which brings us up to the present moment. I’m sitting in a coffee shop, writing about my private life at home. I suppose if I’m writing about it, it’s not too private anymore. I suppose if I’m currently sitting in public, it’s not really part of my ‘at home’ story.

There is still an aspect of independence to it though. Because I walked out of my door without telling anyone where I was going or what I was planning on doing or when I will return. Despite my incredible love for my former roommates, I’m still addicted to this kind of freedom. And I am unable to determine if that characteristic of mine will ever change.

Yours truly,

Calihan